Friends of Vernita Gray and Patricia Ewert use their cellular phones to record Cook County Judge Patricia Logue signing the marriage license of Gray, and Ewert after their ceremony, the first gay marriage in Illinois, at the couple’s home Wednesday, Nov. 27, 2013, in Chicago. U.S. District Judge Thomas Durkin on Monday, Nov. 25, 2013, ordered the Cook County clerk to issue an expedited marriage license to Gray and Ewert before the state’s gay marriage law takes effect in June 2014, because Gray is terminally ill. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

CHICAGO (AP) — In a short ceremony inside their Chicago apartment, two beaming brides made Illinois history Wednesday as they became the first gay couple to wed under the state’s new law legalizing same-sex marriage.

The law approved last week doesn’t go into effect until June, but one of the women — Vernita Gray — is terminally ill with cancer, so she and her partner of five years, Patricia Ewert, were granted an expedited marriage license by a federal judge’s order.

The two made it official Wednesday in front of more than 20 friends at their high-rise home on the city’s North Side. A Cook County judge officiated, and a close friend who deemed himself the “flower girl” tossed red rose petals and the couple kissed several times.